Ok, so back to the original topic at hand…

One concern I had is the whole "trolling" thing.

There are likely a dozen different definitions you can apply to that, so outlawing such a vague thing I think would be a mistake. It'd be like if you put "Don't be an asshat" in your rules, anyone can pop up and decide "Hey, Bob is being an asshat!"

If there are a specific set of behaviors associated with being a "troll" that this site doesn't want, then I think it would be beneficial to outline said behaviors first, then perhaps at the bottom of them put "aka, being a troll." Leaving it vague like that I think is almost asking for more problems.

A related (albeit out of context) quote from another thread:


Generally speaking, my foremost concerns when joining or participating in any given community is a) relevance to my interests, and b) the standards of behavior. I'm a long-time internet user, and definitely a proponent of the "lurk before you post" philosophy so that you can get a feel for the community's standards. For effective communication, it is very important to me that either clear guidelines for acceptable behavior exist (i.e., rules) and that they are followed consistently, OR that moderated material is available in full (or as full as possible) so that I can get a full picture of what is and is not acceptable.

It really disappoints me when there are vague "everyone behave and we'll be fine xD" guidelines and then offending content is removed by methods such as thread deletions. While I do understand that offensive content is not desirable on the site, I much prefer leaving such content in place even after it has been partially censored or locked. It allows me to read through what was actually said and form my own opinions and get a feel for the nuances of where the administration's stance really lies, rather than having to read through ego-laden fallout (on all sides, typically) from the post-removal discussions. The administration is free to run the site however they choose, but clearer distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable behavior is always, I believe, preferable to playing guessing games about how submitted content (whether it be code, or discussion, or anything else) will be received.

I really hope that this thread gets more attention and feedback than it has received thus far, for the benefit of us all.

To briefly rephrase what I said, since it's relevant again, I would very much like there to not only be rather clear guidelines on behavior, but also on the procedures used to determine what fits what kind of behavior. As I said previously, I would assume that the admins would take care of that; then, the question I have is what would happen if, as we had this time, a dispute centrally involves one admin and one non-admin.

I also agree that leaving moderated material on the site is, most of the time at least, a good thing.

I think moderated content being left on the site so others can see what is not acceptible is only appropriate if the portions that were offensive are removed, which raises the question of what someone else is deriving as guidelines from seeing it at that point. Unless someone is suggesting a seperate (and staff-only-posting) forum/thread to display posts that were deemed inappropriate, rather than delete a post/thread a moderator would move them to there thus making it only viewable to those who want to go out of their way to view it, but that still leaves the site and administrative staff open to possible legal liability for allowing that content to remain publicly visable, depending on the reason for the moderation in the first place.

Illegal content would of course have to be removed entirely, but illegal covers a very, very narrow window of unacceptable content. Much of what seems to be undesirable would be perfectly legal (not to mention protected) were it not for the face that this is a private system and things such as free speech do not apply.

Despite it being a private system, I generally do not see a reason to censor or remove content which is merely inflammatory. I would be perfectly happy with just locking the thread and tagging it as inappropriate in such a way that anyone viewing it would be well aware that they are leaving the usual safe boundaries. Vague, sweeping censorship almost always devolves into an admin-said/user-said/other-users-said fiasco and does very little to shed any light on the situation and on where the line is for future newcomers to the community.

Of course, if sufficient guidelines are created and there is a concrete violation, then I have no problem removing the offending portions of a post (but not entire posts or entire threads) and a small note affixed to the post saying it was censored and why. It's only when the guidelines are not sufficient and administrators' individual judgment must be exercised regularly that I feel the need to leave moderated content intact.

Edit: By "Illegal content" in my first sentence, I also meant to include instances where liability is clearly a problem and the offending content needs to be removed. I seem to recall discussions elsewhere about forum sites being generally held blameless in instances of one user defaming or libeling another, or at least in the clear until a takedown request was received by the site from one of the parties involved (along the same vein of DMCA takedown requests, etc). I could be talking out of my rear though – I've done no specific research on the matter.

That, I wouldn't have a problem with. As long as the moderated content was, as you said, clearly labeled as inappropriate so that viewers would be able to understand that they were seeing an example of the sort of post that would get them in trouble for posting it. And, again, this assumes also that anything illegal, such as libel/slander or conversations that constitute planning the commission of a crime, is actually deleted rather than just tagged as inappropriate. I would, personally, think that this should also be extended to include "hate speech", but I don't know the legal liability of that. As for the site being generally held blameless, that may be true, but as a moderator/admin, I wouldn't want to take the chance by waiting to find out.

What about a way to specifically tie a post in with a violation of the policy. Maybe have a little drop down menu labeled "This post violates |——| policy and should be reviewed" if an admin marks the claim as valid, it'd show a little thing at the top "This post violates said policy" and keeps the content hidden -unless- a user specifically asks to view it. It would then show specifically what policy was violated and could be used as a reference. This would also take some pressure off us and allow the user base to have a say in what happens. I think it's only fair you guys retain some say in the direction of posts, especially after the nature of this topic.

One of the things I had suggested before resigning was implementation of a "Report this content" link that would go to a short contact form where the link to the page would be included, you could fill in an email address, and write a short comment on why you're reporting it. More or less like how TMC does it.

This wasn't going to take the place of active moderation, but would allow folks to voice a concern about specific material that they either found offensive, or they believed violated a rule of some kind.

QSFP does not currently have this type of feature but it's on the list of things to add down the road since it would be of general interest to any site using the software. The specific list of rules could be entered into a database table that could hold unspecified content that the software could provide as a reason for the report, along with the ever so generic "other" that would require an explanation.

Although that would be a great feature in general, it might be over-solving the current problem. Frankly, there aren't that many violations, and when there is potential for violation it's usually pretty clear. (e.g., the whole forum is up in flames…) If a violation goes by unnoticed that somebody feels strongly about, they can PM the admins.

As for the censoring business, I think that's mainly an issue for things that are actually illegal, or spam links that we don't want up anyhow. The former case is somewhat tricky; for the latter case, you can simply censor the link and put a note in its place saying "spam link removed" or something to that effect.

For posts that violate the rules about flaming etc., I think that admin action speaks pretty much as strongly as you need. If admins intervene to stop something, it's a clear indication that that material does not belong; I don't think you'd really be offending people's sensibilities by leaving it there. (Barring particularly bad violations, I suppose.) Especially since most of the violations we're talking about will be fairly straightforward. Even if somebody came out with something crazy like advocating Nazism, I think it would be sufficient to have the administrators condemn it, stop it, and everybody moves on from there. The actions of the admins define the tone of the site to a large extent, after all.



EDIT:
Samson's "report this post" suggestion would be simpler IMO and sufficient for the vast majority of cases. I'd say to go with that as opposed to the relatively complicated hiding-reported-content etc.

Actually, that'd be really cool, you'd still have to delete posts that could be a legal liability to the site itself, but for the rest, it'd be a unique approach. On the downside, I have absolutely no idea how you'd go about incorporating it codewise, but between you and Kiasyn, and maybe if you could Samson in an advisory capacity, I have no doubt that you guys could figure it out. :smile:


Oh, that'd be sufficient for the membership side.. and it'd be a very welcome addition to my own QSFP sites. :smile:

I think hiding of said content is necessary to show that it is indeed inappropriate, if someone comes to the site and only reads the one post it could totally alter their perception of the site. I'd also rather not have content like that in full view of everyone. Formally tagging a specific post as inappropriate. I think hiding such content would allow threads to continue on longer. Having to lock an entire thread because of one idiot hinders discussion. We could also tag replies as inappropriate material as well, to show if this happens, ignore it, let it be handles and move on with the discussion. I'd rather a troll be a bump in the road, and not a brick wall. Out of site out of mind (punz!)

Well, let's take a case study of where this would be necessary. Let's consider the 'infamous thread' about tasers that pretty much got this whole thing started. What in there would be hidden?

I agree that it could be important for a post to be tagged as 'bad' by the admins. But you can do that with the current post-edit feature, adding a note to the top of the post explaining the situation.

What I'm basically trying to say is that although I think your feature is very good, I think most of the goals can be accomplished with means that we have right now, that do not require new features (and hence, more work on the part of the developers).

Oh it's really simple ajax. I could have it in and functioning by tonight if I really wanted to ;). As for the legal material, ya, it'd would have to happen. I don't want someone taking down the site by going to the host. It's bad for business.

Wow, Davion, very well put. I think that for most of us who can't code something like that into our own forums, Samson's idea is quite sufficient, but if you can make something like that it'd be a great way to go, in fact, if you can make something like that as a mod for QSFP I'd install it into my forums without any hesitation, and my forums are small enough to have almost no need for "moderation" at all.

I just want to expand on this a bit, as it was relevant to the most recent fiasco. If in sticking strictly to thing which are illegal, or promote illegal activity, it would need to be made crystal clear which country's laws you're basing this on. Even then, what's illegal in the USA ( DMCA covered stuff for example ) vs, say, Denmark, won't match up and would become a sticky point.

And if ONLY illegal type stuff was removed, along with obvious spam, since the remainder is perfectly legal even if everyone finds it offensive, the question becomes: Who decides when it disappears? There would have to be a very clear understanding that if the admin say "X is offensive, and it's being deleted" that that's the end of it and there shouldn't be a 100+ post flamewar erupting about it on someone else's forums crying censorship. It should also be made clear that it's not acceptable for violating behavior to take place simply because it's been directed AT an admin.

Free speech is a very touchy subject, and I have always preferred a hands off approach. That includes letting the admins have the freedom to get involved in whatever they feel they want to. Including controversial subjects which some find offensive.

There's also a disclaimer I hear quite often on TV, the radio, and other public media when a commentator working for the station is giving an opinion. It goes something like:

"The views expressed by this editorial do not necessarily reflect the views of the management of this station, it's parent network, or any of our advertisers, and should not be construed as the official opinion of ___."

So a disclaimer like that in the policy should exist so people with poor comprehension skills don't get the idea that the site is advocating a position based on something an admin says.

I totally agree about the legal material.
Wow, what a statement, mind if I repeat that one? Nothing about ajax is even remotely simple to me currently, but if it's that easy to do, why not? It'd be an awesome approach to moderation and, as I mentioned in a previous post, if you can snippitize it for QSFP in general, I'd install it into my forums in a heartbeat. :smile:

Unfortunately it's already leading to more work. I'll have to set it up so inappropriate posts cannot then be edited by said user, and that is probably more work than allowing the contents to be hidden. That is, depending on the policy violated. This comes back around to 'punishment suiting the crime'. Also what has to be taken into account is how valuable the person is to the site. If they're just being annoying, and they've done nothing but be annoying, pfft. They can screw off. If they're actually being valuable, should they be treated differently? I ask this because so many people have voiced there concerns about the health of the site. I think skirting this issue and saying "everyone is treated equal" is just not ideal. If such is the case, setting a punishment for a specific crime is going to be extremely difficult, and hard to follow guidelines for. And remember, we're first a foremost a Resource site, not a forum. So try to think in that light when making your decision and try to see it from my point of view.


Agreed. Excellent addition to the policy.

Sounds similar in function to the Digg system. Or would this not cause the post to be hidden simply because enough users clicked the button? ( abuse potential btw, lots of it ).

I'd most likely set it up so that the post wont be hidden till an admin validates the accusation. Kinda set it up the way the Code Repository reports that we have a new submission, it'd report we have a new violation.

I would think that you'd want to try to cover all the bases and err on the side of caution where possible, but could probably safely operate within the laws of the country in which the site was hosted.


I would think that if it's being left there to set an example of what is not allowed it'd be left there as long as the rest of the posts in that thread otherwise would've been left there, but that decision should certainly remain the administration's decision and there is no reason for a post flamewar of any length because, despite some folks opinions to the contrary, it's up to the site administration to make those decisions, even on a site like this one where the administration has always allowed the members to provide input. As for posts directed to/at an admin, my firm stance is that an admin is still a member of the site and must abide by the rules just like other members but also must be treated with the same respect that other members are accorded if not more respect because they're the one allowing you to use their site.


Free speech is only a touchy subject if you allow it to be. The fact is that any site such as this one falls outside the protections of the United States' 1st amendment or, to my knowledge, any other countries laws that are of a similar nature. While some might find it draconian or what have you, if the admins choose to censer or even censure anyone who posted anything outside their own opinion they'd be entirely within their legal right.


Would such a disclaimer belong in the general forum policies or within the signature of admins or somewhere else altogether? (I'm not sure who's opinions you're trying to allow to be freely expressed without jeapardizing the site's reputation here, since that is the purpose of such a disclaimer.)